Too Much Obama Can Be Hazardous to the President’s Health

posted at 9:56 am on September 16, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Media ]   

Don’t touch that dial. This coming Sunday morning, if you happen to be channel-surfing and see the same show on every network you tune in to, don’t assume there is anything wrong with your TV. What you will be witnessing is the biggest — and most desperate in the opinion of some — media blitz in the history of the U.S. presidency.

Barack Obama will be making guest appearances on five (count ‘em, 5) Sunday morning news shows. These include in order of ratings, NBC’s “Meet the Press” (32% market share), ABC News’ “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” (28% market share), and CBS’s “Face the Nation” (27% market share). The topic will be (drum roll) health-care reform. Again. Obama failed to change the game with his address last Wednesday to a joint session of Congress, and decided to make one more last-ditch effort (until presumably the next last-ditch effort).

Those of you who earned top grades in arithmetic are probably scratching your heads right now, noting that the above list includes the names of only three programs, not five. That is because the remaining two shows on which Obama’s smiling punim will be seen failed to place in the weekly ratings according to the TV ratings website By the Numbers. Those shows are CNN’s “State of the Nation” and Univision’s “Al Punto with Jorge Ramos.”

You may have also noticed that one prominent news organization’s Sunday morning competitor is conspicuously absent from the list. That of course is Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace,” which commands a 13% market share.

Jake Tapper of ABC News explains why the White House is willing to sacrifice a sizable chunk of the electorate in getting its message out: “Democrats say the Fox News Sunday audience is largely entrenched in their opposition to the president, essentially beyond persuasion, and thus submitting to an interview might not be the best use of Obama’s time.”

Time will tell how wise it is for a president this early in his administration to decide to “cut his losses” and, in so doing, alienate about a seventh of the population. Time will also tell how much support the president can garner for his health-care proposal with yet more exposure. He’s already given twenty-some speeches on the topic. An ABC News/Washington Poll last week indicated 54 percent of Americans claim that the more they hear about the president’s proposed overhaul, the less they like it.

Republican strategist Kevin Madden insists its worse than that — that Obama is risking overexposure in televisionland:

I think the worry is it’s gone beyond over exposure and now we have what I would call the “Obama omnipresence.” You almost can’t escape this president. It goes beyond just cable news and it goes into whether or not you’re flipping on ESPN and you’re seeing him talk about basketball or you turn on the Lifetime channel and you hear what Michelle Obama is wearing this week. And I think that begins to wear on a lot of people.”

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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